Kurdish nationalism: Positive role of Turkey

-DR. ABDUL RUFF COLACHAL 

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Kurdish-inhabited area (1992).

Since Kurdish nationalism is not going to die down, Turkey would serve the cause of Islam by allowing new nation   

Turkey, heavily shielded by military forces,   has been struggling to end the freedom movement of Kurdish people in Turkey.

It must be said to the credit of Turkish government that  it has travelled  a long road of  reconciliation indoors and  outside alongside the normalization of the military’s role, the stabilization of party politics,  Turkey has also in a way accomplished improvements in Kurds’ political, economic, and social status.

Nationalism 

Kurdish nationalism is the political movement that holds that the Kurdish people are a nation deserving of a sovereign homeland, Kurdistan, partitioned out of the territories where Kurdish people form a majority. Currently, these territories lie in northern Iraq (including, but not limited to, Iraqi Kurdistan), northwestern Iran (Iranian Kurdistan), southeastern Turkey (Turkish Kurdistan), and small parts of northern and northeastern Syria (Syrian Kurdistan).

Kurdish nationalism has long been espoused and promoted by the worldwide Kurdish Diaspora. Kurdish Nationalism has its roots in the days of the Ottoman Empire, within which it became a significant ethnic group. With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurdish-majority territories were divided between the newly formed states of Iraq, Syria and Turkey, making Kurds a significant ethnic minority in each state. Kurdish nationalist movements have long been suppressed by Turkey, Iran and the Arab-majority states of Iraq and Syria, all of whom fear loss of territory to a potential, independent Kurdistan. 

Since the 1970s, Iraqi Kurds have pursued the goal of greater autonomy and even outright independence against the Baath Party regimes, which responded with brutal repression. In the 1980s, an armed insurgency led by the Patriotic Front of Kurdistan challenged the Turkish state, which responded with martial law. After the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi Kurds were protected against the armies of Iraqi Saddam Hussein by NATO-enforced no fly zones, allowing them considerable autonomy and self-government without the control of the Iraqi government. 

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq that ousted President Saddam Hussein, Iraqi Kurdistan became an autonomous region, enjoying a great measure of self-governance but stopping short of full independence.

Nationalism is not rational or reasonable. It is by definition, irrational. It is emotion-based, created usually by the rulers to keep solidarity and unity of a nation. Its goal is to unite people for a cause, and it is a motivator. Just like religiosity.

This is very important when understanding human history.

Turkish nationalism

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal came to power. Atatürk spoke positively about the Pan-Turkic view and he wanted to forge closer relationships with other Turkish states in Central Asia and the West. 

Starting in the 1920s, Turkish nationalism was founded upon the determination of the Turks to survive World War I. The Sevrés Treaty and Sykes-Picot agreements were part of the Entente Powers' & their Anti-Turkish Nationalist allies' plans to divide the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

It is plausible and very likely, that Ataturk understood this, so instead of implementing a sense of superiority in Turks over other nationalities, Ataturk promoted inclusiveness and unity. He told people to forget their ethnic groups/religious-identities and previous grievances/hatreds or other revenge-feelings over World War I.

The problem of Turkish nationalism was that the people of the Turkish nation were of a wide variety of ethnic groups, genes, and races. As such, Turkish nationalism was inclusively defined as either anyone who speaks Turkish or who calls him or herself "a Turk." Hence, the Turkish nationality has been created from mainly Greek, Armenian, Circassian, Tatar, Laz, Abkhazian, Azerbaijanian, Georgian, Assyrian, Jewish, Albanian, Macedonian, Bulgarian Muslim, Sephardic Jew, and Turkish ethnicities and religions. In essence, it is a melting pot of all Anatolian people ranging from the gene pools of Asia and the Balkans

As a response to Anti-Turkish Nationalism that had begun to ethnically cleanse Anatolia, Turks united behind Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to defend themselves from utter destruction, brought upon various rebellions in the Ottoman lands

Positive role 

Today, Turkey is battling internal as well as outside issues: EU membership and corruption scandal to destabilize the Islamist state.   The recent corruption scandal engulfing the AKP and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is merely the most prominent and sensational manifestation of that reality. As in the 1990s, Turkey’s transition remains stuck between authoritarianism and the consolidation of a democratic political order. The corruption scandal is likely to weaken both.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power and launched a program of wide-ranging political reforms and it has achieved many plus points in its development.   The AKP’s 2010 referendum which was trumpeted as another step in the AKP’s drive to forge a more democratic Turkey, included a little more than two dozen changes, among which were innocuous provisions for the protection of children’s rights, freedom of residence and movement, and the right to petition, acquire information, and appeal. AKP’s first term, which lasted from 2002 through 2007 fruitfully for the nation and people while pragmatism and consensus marked Turkish politics. In June 2007, Istanbul police uncovered an alleged plot between military officers, intelligence operatives, and organized crime figures to overthrow the government. Since then, AKP has been under attack. After Ergenekon came the Sledgehammer investigation in 2010, which ensnared large numbers of senior military commanders in another suspected effort to bring down the AKP government.  Opponents have been plotting to overthrow the elected government of AKP.

The Islamist regime under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) should show to the world that can create enough good will to encourage democratic traditions , for the first time in the world, take real roots in  a nation. Creation of Kurdish nation would greatly help Turkey have that distinction.

And with that Turkey would automatically change its foreign policy.icy goals. There have, no doubt, been important changes in Turkish politics, in particular the participation of new and different groups. At the same time, it is fair to say that it is still far -- as far as it was in the 1990s -- from democracy.

Observation 

It is time Istanbul seriously considered to find a credible framework for strengthening Kurdish territories by encouraging them to gain full and complete freedom from Turkey.

That is to say, as the first even nation on earth, turkey should take the lead to end crisis in Kurdish region, allowing them to become an independent nation with UN membership

And, Turkey should have broad heart and mind to let a new nation emerge on its own territories to coexist with Turkey on friendly relationship.   The recent corruption scandal engulfing the AKP and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is merely the most prominent and sensational manifestation of that reality. 

That would make Islam strong.